How to Replace Rear Exterior Door Handle 2006-11 Toyota Camry

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

I’m working on the rear passenger door. I’m going to remove it. We're going to use these plastic trim tools. You can get these from 1AAuto.com. Pry out this plastic piece that's behind here. Pop the trim tool in here. I’m just going to hold open the door handle. That pops it right out. Put that aside. Remove the screw with a Phillips head screwdriver.

Use our plastic trim tool again. Slide it under here. Pop this handle cover off. Just kind of work it underneath. Put that aside. There's two screws, Phillips head. Remove those. If that screw stays in there, that's fine; we can grab it after we pop the door off. With the three screws removed, we can pop the door off the clips. There's a bit of a lip here, just on the inside of the door. Pull behind it, and I can reach underneath. You just want to reach around the edge of the door, and we pick the door panel up and up from the door. There's the screw that fell out.

Pull the door handle and lock mechanism out, just pops it out, and it'll sit there. Unplug the harness for the window switch. Push in on the lock. Put the door panel aside.

These push clips, they're not damaged; they just popped out. One stuck in the door. I'll use a trim tool to pop that one out. This one went down here and came out, so I'm just going to put it back in. It just slides back into place. It can be reused. I've just got to get that one out of the door.

Going to disconnect the handle that opens the door. Also has the door lock on here. Just going to push the cable up and out and slide that little lead weight. Pop it right out. Same for the other one. Take note that the white was on the top, the green was on the bottom so when you go to put it back together, you don't reverse them.

We need to pull this vapor barrier off the door. It's got butyl tape around it that's sealing it. I can be reused. This is where you're going to want to wear gloves because this stuff is very, very sticky and it kind of gets everywhere but you basically just carefully peel this back. You can have a razor blade with you with you, and you can just kind of cut it. It helps on a warmer day to do this. If it peels off, don't worry about it because this stuff is incredibly sticky and we should be able to reuse this piece without much issue. I'm just going to carefully cut that. Try not to stretch the pink plastic too much.

As you're moving along, so this harness is kind of in this opening here. I'm going to feed the harness back through, and I'm just going to keep peeling it. I'm going to feed these wires out, actually these are the cables. They kind of sit there. I'm going to put this aside, obviously sticky side up so that we can reuse it.

To get to this door lock actuator you can probably peel back the weather barrier or the vapor barrier just to here. It's really sticky though and just in general we remove the whole thing. It's just easier to work, because I'm going to be going in this way to get to it. That way it's not sticking to me and stuff.

Start by disconnecting the electrical connector here. Take a small flat blade screwdriver, push the lock in, and just gently pull out on it. Working inside the door panel, you need to pop off the little control rod that goes to the outside door handle to the door lock actuator. You need to reach up in here in this little blue sort of a fork looking thing. You need to pop it off of that silver rod. This comes off like that. Now we're ready to unbolt the actuator and pull it out.

Remove the T30 Torx bolts that are holding the actuator in. These are all loose. Push the door lock actuator in and pull it out. I also need to unclip these cables from this clip. Then clip these. The door actuator already wants to come out, just slide it right out of the door opening.

To remove the outer door handle, there's a T25 Torx here. It needs to be loosened, and with the door lock actuator removed and out of the way, there's a T25 Torx in there, that's actually a captured bolt so once you loosen it, it will stay with the handle and won't fall in the door. Go in there and loosen it. Finish taking this one off. This one's not captured, when you remove it, you can drop it in the door, so be careful.

First we need to pop this little cap off. Use a plastic prying tool, you can get these from 1AAuto.com, pop it up, and just kind of pop it off. So that just came, because the screw is loosened, it popped right out. Put that aside. We'll take our door handle, pull it straight back, and then slide it out of place. Pull these little rubber sort of grommets out. They're kind of clipped into place, going to have to tear them. They've got little clips. This one, pull backwards, they just kind of slide over the sheet metal. Reach in, we're going to push the whole door handle backing assembly, so it's going to come off this clip here, push it out and it's going to go forward, and then feed it out of the door panel.

This little grommet that the bolt goes into, it does come out, don't worry about that, you can actually pull it out while you're installing it. We're going to slide this back into the door opening, then move and look at the outside of the door. I reach in with my fingers and grab it. It's going to capture that tab there. Try to grab it with a finger. It in place there.

Take that grommet, it's like a six-point, just push it in place. I'm going to switch hands here, push it in with my right hand. Push this in place. That will stay in place. I'm going to install the little grommets, they've got little pieces that slide underneath the sheet metal and just sit in place. Same thing for this one.

Take our door handle, slide it in, push it forward. The little door cap, I'm just going to push it in place. Reinstall the Torx bolts, and up into place. I'm just going to, once it gets snug, I'm just going to stop. Tighten this one, might have to hold this cap from the outside so it doesn't fall off as you're trying to tighten it. And this is going in plastic, so once you feel it get tight, just want to stop.

We're going to reinstall our door lock actuator. Just be careful of the child safety lock. You don't want to break it off. Slide it into the door opening. There's this—that blue clip here. Just kind of get beyond that, and slide it up. We actually slide it into that blue little capture that captures that little control right there. There's plenty of space for it. Make sure your child safety lock pushes through this little grommet, just like that. It just needs to sit over here. That's in place. Reinstall the Torx bolts. With these lined up this looks like this. Captured. They've got a little cone shape to them, so just kind of push it into place, but I can reach back here and move it where I want it.

Just make sure you reconnect the part of the door handle that was on that blue fork piece, which I did while I maneuvered this into place. You should have your child safety lock where you want it, either locked or unlocked, and then pull your door actuator back in. Clip your control cables back in place. Get our original vapor barrier here—it still has a lot of the butyl tape left on there. If you need to get more butyl tape, it's pretty easily to get, and you can just put some more on there. But first I'm going to feed the cables through, just kind of get them through, just kind of let it hang on the cables. I'm going to feed the harness up and through and everything.

I'm just going to kind of line it up roughly where it was before and just push it back into place. Don't worry too much about any wrinkles. Just push it down and it'll seal. In this car the white cable went on top, the green one went on the bottom. You can kind of tell by the length of the cable, which one fits better, because they will both fit in both spots, but you'll end up crossing them. So this will want to open the door, and this will want to lock the doors, which you don't want that. You want this to open the door. You want this to lock the door. The white one's going to go in the top, put that little lid weight on the cable like that, and put it over. The green one in, just like that. That works the door.

Now we're going to need to install our door panel. Take our door panel, make sure all of our clips are okay. Take this, it's going to slide in like that. There's two pins in the top and the bottom that match this. It pops into place. Don't forget to plug in your window switch. Nothing like putting this together and then having to take it back off to plug it back in. There's a groove in here with some clips. They're going to snap into place in here so I'm going to start with the door panel kind of on the high end. It might be easier with the window down but you can do it with the window up. I'm just going to snap it down into place. Then we're going to go down, push all the clips in. Start with the small screw that's behind this. Put the plastic cover back in. You'll start by pushing that clip in first, then it'll snap in the back ones, so open the door handle, snap that into place. We have to do the other two screws in the door handle. Just kind of goes straight on.

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